Shin­galis Tell Their Tragic Sto­ries

The sto­ries and tragedies of Ezidis did not seem to have stopped when they were dis­placed and mas­sa­cred in their own land. The tragedies didn’t stop when the hell broke out. Po­ple of Shin­gal were liv­ing their usual life when the ISIS buried their dreams alive in the course of hours. They forced them to leave their homes and coun­try. The story of one of the families in Shin­gal could be a good stuff for a novel or a film that couldn’t be writ­ten so eas­ily. The ter­ror­ists didn’t stop at this point, but they at­tacked the honor of Ezidi women which as they say “nei­ther at the era of the Nazis nor the Hitler’s this sort of crime was com­mit­ted”. The events they retell In Shariya (a sub-district lo­cated few kilo­me­ters south of Duhok where mainly Kur­dish Ezi­dies live), over 25 thou­sand families liv­ing in the old build­ings, schools and aban­doned houses. Each one of them tell their tragic story; how they were killed en mass. What seems to be note­wor­thy is : “What­ever hap­pened to us is noth­ing com­pared to what our young girls suf­fered. The bar­bar­ians as­saulted our young women sex­u­ally. This is some­thing we can­not for­get. Hu­man­ity should be ashamed of it­self that our moth­ers and sisters are treated so bar­bar­i­cally in a vi­cious war which set our homes on fire in Shin­gal."

Bayan Bapir, a 27-yearold told Hewler news­pa­per that when the ISIS at­tacked Shin­gal, in ad­di­tion to loot­ing, women were also as­saulted. “A friend of mine who was our neigh­bor, couldn’t escape. They bru­tally as­saulted her, and she’s still miss­ing,” said Bayan.

“While on the moun­tain, peo­ple told tragic sto­ries of girls vic­tim­ized by the ter­ror­ists’ an­i­mal­is­tic de­sires, some of the girls are de­tained in Ba­dosh prison,” con­cluded Bayan. Heart­bro­ken story Par­cham Niro, 20, re­calls that when they went up to the moun­tain­top, they es­caped the ter­ror­ists, but the girls cap­tured by the ISIS were sex­u­ally abused. In ad­di­tion to loot­ing their homes and killing their families, the girls them­selves be­came a part of the un­bear­able tragedy.

“There’re over 500 kid­napped girls. This is much more than a mass killing, be­cause in ad­di­tion to the geno­cide of our peo­ple, our souls are also hurt.” Girls’ sui­cide Layla Khidi, 42, has two daugh­ters who are among the miss­ing. She, along with her son, man­aged to sur­vive af­ter seven days of hunger and thirst on the moun­tain. They even­tu­ally reached Shariya. Layla says both of her daugh­ters were kid­napped, “I know noth­ing about their fate.”

Layla told us in tears: “Many of those kid­napped girls who were sex­u­ally as­saulted de­cided to com­mit sui­cide fear­ing their families and par­ents; life no longer had any mean­ing for them, they pre­ferred death.”

Son killed his own mother!

A more bit­ter story , Mo­rad Bapri, 50, re­called that when ISIS at­tacked Shin­gal, “We knew what’s go­ing to hap­pen, so be­fore run­ning to the moun­tain, fear­ing the honor and dig­nity of 35-year- old mother, a son killed her least she would be cap­tured and at­tacked by the ISIS. This son didn’t re­gret his ac­tion when he reached the Mount Shin­gal be­cause he kept hear­ing the tragic and dis­turb­ing sto­ries of women de­tained by the ISIS."

The beau­ti­ful girls suf­fered most

Mariam Kha­laf, 34, said that the beau­ti­ful girls were the most tar­geted vic­tims; they were taken to the Amirs of ISIS as tro­phies. The de­tained girls were bru­tally as­saulted. The fate of over 500 women is still un­known, some of them are said to be taken to Syria.

This pic­ture shows Shin­gal refugees are wait­ing for re­ceiv­ing food.